


Cownt Your Blessings

by talkingtothesky



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 11:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8530465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/pseuds/talkingtothesky
Summary: Gene falls into a canal and gets very sick.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xysabridde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xysabridde/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, xysabridde! Have some Gene whump.
> 
> [Warning for mentions of unpleasant bodily functions consistent with, y’know, sick bugs…]

Gene's last thought before he hits the water is _How far down does this go?_

Then he's in, and the cold drives the air from his lungs with the shock of it.

He doesn't float. He keeps on sinking, braced for the moment that his feet will hit the bottom and he’ll bounce back up, but it takes forever to happen. By which time he’s struggling for oxygen, and the depths of the canal are not flat and level to plant his feet against. Everything is greeny-brown, largely opaque.

With a clumsy effort, he begins to push himself towards the surface when something yanks his head back under, sharp pain in his scalp making him wince. It only adds to his dizziness. Struggling to hold his breath, Gene feels for the stinging part of his scalp, half expecting to find it torn clean off and bleeding. But it’s intact. His hair, however, seems to be caught on something.

Whatever it is, it’s heavy. Gene gropes blindly through the water, flinching when his fingertips encounter something cold, smooth, and metallic. He frantically follows the taut line of his hair, trying to find where the ends are snagging. Something sharp catches at his hand and for a mad second he fears he’s being bitten by some underwater creature. But the metal - he touches it again, makes out a jagged pattern. He strains to see through the murk. He's managed to get attached to the intertwining cogs of a set of bicycle gears. There’s a whole bike under here, bent out of shape and rusting. He’s bloody lucky he hadn't landed on it when he fell. With the last of his strength he prises the ends of his hair from the gears and once again kicks up to the surface.

He makes it to the top, lungs burning, gasping with sodden, terrified relief. His waterlogged ears register shouting from above. Gene rubs at his stinging eyes, whirling around in confusion. There - there an outline he can recognize, just coming into focus. Sam's voice.

"Chris, fetch that rope!" Chris is looking down at Gene from the tow-path, wide eyed and spaced out. At Sam's barked order, though, he snaps to attention, follows the path of Tyler's pointing finger. It takes him another moment to get his arse in gear, veering away from the edge as much as he can.

And bizarrely, Gene thinks: _I'm gonna be a laughing stock around the office for weeks._

\---

It takes the combined efforts of Ray, Chris, Sam, and Annie to haul him back up. Gene flops onto the canalside on his back, looking like a drowned rat, feeling weak as a kitten, and completely shell-shocked.

Then, even more humiliating, he starts to hack up a load of water. For a few minutes he can’t stop coughing, violently. His throat burns, his eyes stream.

Someone wraps him in a thick blanket, but he’s still wet through and shivering.

Sam's hand rubs comforting arcs up and down Gene's back.

Gene wants to let himself slump into Sam's arms, curl up and go to sleep, but that's not an option at the moment.

"Oi. Don't pass out on me, you're alright." Sam tells him, with false cheer.

He groans.

\---

An ambulance arrives shortly after. Gene insists he’s fine, but they take him in anyway, doing tests at the hospital to check his lungs are working. He spends a restless night there so they can keep him in ‘for supervision’, then discharges himself first thing in the morning.

\---

Three days later, Gene full on has the flu. He reluctantly takes the day off and stays in bed, shivering and trying not to make his raging headache any worse. It does get worse, of course, because he has to keep running to the bathroom to puke his guts up.

Sam is sympathetic, but he has to go to work. When he comes home in the evening he takes Gene's temperature, stares at the thermometer with his eyebrows raised, and then disappears into the kitchen to make toast and soup. He serves it up to Gene in bed like a good little housewife, even smooths Gene's sweaty hair back and kisses his forehead.

"Don't do that, I might be contagious," Gene croaks, but Sam only smiles.

"If I get it, that just means I get to stay home with you."

"Not like you, not to care about the crime rate in Manchester."

"We're not the only police officers in the entire city, you know."

"Yeah but, you're the only one that's any good." Gene points out, too worn out to censor himself.

Sam stops, and goes a little red at the tips of his ears. "That may be the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"Don't get used to it, I'm just knackered." He yawns, and then sneezes, and then his stomach decides to rebel again. He just about makes it to the sink on time. What little he ate of Sam's soup comes right back up.

He's just wiping his mouth and swilling the sink out when Sam pokes his head round the door and gasps. Gene scowls at him tiredly. "Yes, thank you, Dorothy, I'm aware that I look like shit."

"How long have you had that rash?" Sam says, unexpectedly.

"What rash?"

Sam lifts up the back of Gene's vest and turns him sideways so he can see himself in the mirror. There's an ugly red blotchy mess all over his lower back, which explains why just lying down in bed has been hurting so much. All his muscles ache.

“That settles it, I'm staying off work tomorrow and taking you back to the hospital.”

Gene whines. “Oh, Sam, no. I just want to sleep it off in peace. Don’t make me get poked and prodded.”

“Drowsiness is a symptom. And that rash…it could be meningitis.”

Gene stares at him. “Well, if it is, you’re definitely getting sick. You should not have kissed me.”

Sam shrugs. “Proper bed rest tonight, then hospital first thing. Your fever’s pretty bad right now, I just hope it doesn't get any worse.”

Gene trudges back to bed and makes sure Sam sleeps on the sofa for the sake of his own conscience. It’s just as well, because he’s up half the night with diarrhoea. It’s a thoroughly miserable few hours. Gene feels like he’s dying. He sits on the bog with his head in his hands. He might have fallen asleep like that had Sam not knocked on the door and chivvied him back to bed.

They both feel like zombies come daybreak. Gene grudgingly gets into the passenger seat of the Cortina. Sam isn't really in a fit state to drive either, but they both agree that involving Annie in this would be a very bad idea for her health.

\---

“The good news is, this is not viral meningitis. You've contracted a rare strain of Leptospirosis, also known as Weil’s disease. It’s a form of bacterial infection found in dirty water, especially stagnant canals. We’re administering antibiotics intravenously, which should clear up the bacteria.”

“When can I go home?”

“Well, you see, if you hadn't been so quick to leave before, we might have caught this before it progressed to the stage that it has.”

Gene breathes in too quickly, angrily, and this sets off another round of painful coughing. By his bedside, Sam stands with his arms folded tight across his chest, biting his lip, obviously suppressing the urge to reach out and comfort, which he can’t do in front of the doctor. “How. Long.” Gene barks, when he can breathe again.

“At least a week, I'm afraid. Symptoms in severe cases have been known to persist for up to twenty-one days.”

“Oh, _god_ ,” Sam says, with feeling. Gene couldn't agree more.

\---

As it happens, he’s in hospital for ten days. He loses a ton of weight, which hopefully means Gladys will stop threatening to put him on a diet. And he’s not contagious, so he didn't infect everyone at work. Sam stays healthy, and gloats about it, saying his DNA is more advanced, for some reason. Gene’s too dozy at the time to bother arguing.

But it means they can hold hands when nobody’s watching, and Annie can visit, sneaking in hip flasks and pink wafers for Gene behind Sam’s back.

It means that when Gene finally gets home to his freshly laundered, neatly made bed, he can cuddle up with Sam and feel pretty sodding lucky to be alive, actually.


End file.
